[0:00] This is Experimental, where we explore exciting research occurring at Louisiana
State University and learn about the individuals posing the questions. I'm Becky Carmichael.
Today, we hear from Dr. Edgar Berdahl from the Digital Media Center, where he explores
the science of music and making new instruments with computers that shape the human
experience.

Edgar Berdahl

[0:21] Does your favorite music have the ability to rouse your spirits, take your
mind to another place, make you remember something that you had forgotten, or enhance
your workout, make you drive faster or provoke an emotional response? Music plays
an invaluable role in shaping the human experience and making it more joyful. For
this reason music is also a fascinating field to study. Here at LSU, we are studying
the science of music. The engineering of music technology and how this is informed
by and informs the practice of music. Do you play an instrument, or are you close
to someone who does? Have you ever stopped to think about how an acoustic musical
instrument works? For thousands of years researchers have been studying musical instruments.
My work explores the taxonomy, that is the scientific classification of musical instruments.
In other words, I compare musical instruments with each other and study how they can
be logically grouped into categories. I look for holes in the taxonomy and tried to
discover new musical instruments to fill in those holes and to make new music. Often
it is easier to use computers to simulate the sound of these new instruments rather
than to build them. Let me explain using a few examples. A mechanical metronome is
a simple percussion instrument, which is formerly classified as an idiophone. It generates
a ticking sound over and over again. What about an instrument that is comprised of
many metronomes all ticking at the same time? I studied this by simulating a percussion
instrument made of 62 metronomes that all start at the same time and gradually go
out of sync. Consider how you would perceive this sound. It's quite different from
a normal metronome. Can you understand why it is easier to simulate this with a computer
than to play it yourself or to build it. But imagine how challenging it would be in
the real world if you tried to manually start 62 metronomes all at the same time.
Many different chordophone instruments have strings, such as pianos, violins, guitars,
etc. However, the tension on these stringed instruments cannot be rapidly adjusted
in real time, but I wanted to hear what that would sound like if I could do it. So
instead of building it manually, I created a virtual harp of strings whose tension
can be rapidly varied in order to discover what this instrument would sound like if
we were to build it. Here is the sound of the instruments pitches gradually wavering
up and down. Or if the pitches are wavered really, really fast the sound of the string
starts to melt into something completely different each time one of the tension modulated
strings is plucked. It sounds like an explosion, but it can nonetheless sound high
or low, like normal notes on strings. Here it is. Finally, here's one more example
with the same instrument, but used in a different way. Imagine a string whose frequency
gets reduced so far, that it starts to sound rhythmic instead of like a specific note.
This would be like imagine plucking a guitar string and then having it gradually become
as long as the cable on a bridge and what it would sound like then if it had the same
energy in it that was there when you plucked it when it was a guitar string. Now you
can hear what that would sound like. Here it is. Well, there you have it. Those are
some examples of what we do in the Experimental Music and Digital Media Program. We
are also developing very precise instrumentation for playing these virtual instruments
so that we can use them for live performance. Imagining hearing these instruments
played live in a concert hall with 82 loudspeakers, all playing at the same time,
with sound coming from all directions. To the left. To the right. In front. Behind
and above. If you come to one of our concerts, you'll discover what we mean.

Mark DiTusa

[4:44] So this is Dr. Edgar Berdahl. So you're in the Electronic Media and Digital
Music, or do I have that backwards?

Edgar Berdahl

[4:51] I'm an assistant professor of Experimental Music and Digital Media.

Mark DiTusa

[4:55] Okay.

Edgar Berdahl

[4:55] Which is hosted in the School of Music. But I also spent half of my time working
at the Center for Computation and Technology, which is an interdisciplinary computer
science center on campus.

Mark DiTusa

[5:07] What is your journey to becoming who you are today? Like, for example, what
did you go to college for? Like, as a major? Like, were you a music major or you a
science major?

Edgar Berdahl

[5:16] I was an electrical engineering major.

Mark DiTusa

[5:18] Okay

Edgar Berdahl

[5:19] But I took as many music courses as I could all along the way all the way through
my PhD and my postdoc.

Mark DiTusa

[5:26] Okay. So yeah, so you kept music a part of you for your life? And so well,
then how did you from electrical engineering get to using your electrical engineer
prowess in a musical setting?

Edgar Berdahl

[5:38] Experimental music is the way of the future.

Mark DiTusa

[5:41] Okay.

Edgar Berdahl

[5:42] Everything was experimental before it became typical. And so what we're doing
right now here on campus is what everyone else is going to be doing 20-30 years from
now.

Mark DiTusa

[5:51] Bold statement! Probably true, though. As an electrical engineer like did you
see yourself going and doing what a typical electrical engineer would do?

Edgar Berdahl

[6:00] I certainly enjoy working in those areas as well. But when I was in college,
I got very inspired by a course I took in programming computers for making sound and
making music.

Mark DiTusa

[6:09] Okay.

Edgar Berdahl

[6:09] And in that course, I discovered that there was an entire universe of possibilities
that I could reach just by learning a few programming tricks that had been completely
inaccessible to me from before then. And as soon as I discovered that, I also learned
how to listen to Experimental music.

Mark DiTusa

[6:25] So how does one listen to Experimental music?

Edgar Berdahl

[6:28] There are many different ways to listen to Experimental music. You can focus
very closely on it, trying to hear all of the details, and that's really what I recommend.
Other kinds of experimental music, particularly minimal music, lend themselves to
more meditative kinds of listening. You can also listen to experimental music by engaging
with it in an interactive way, such as encountering a sound art installation in a
museum. And in order to hear the sounds you have to interact with it and so it's an
ongoing process.

Mark DiTusa

[6:54] Okay. Okay. I'll try that next time I'm encountering Experimental music. So
yeah, so you had this class and you kind of were exposed to experimental music, and
that with your skill set, you could do that. So what did you do as a postdoc or where
were you?

Edgar Berdahl

[7:08] From my postdoc, I took some of the techniques that I studied in my PhD, and
I tried to make them more accessible for other musicians.

Mark DiTusa

[7:16] Okay, so what did you do as a Ph.D., I guess then.

Edgar Berdahl

[7:20] Well let's just say, as a postdoc, my focus was really on designing software
that a lot of people could use and that could be deployed onto many different kinds
of platforms. So I developed these... These physical model simulations that I developed,
they can be compiled into over 50 different audio targets, meaning you can use them
in your typical audio mixing software, you can use them in specialized computer music
software, you can access them from web browsers, you can access them from embedded
devices that you might install inside a building, you can access them from smartphones,
tablets, etc.

Mark DiTusa

[7:51] So I guess in the end, you really did approach electrical engineering from
a music standpoint, even in your PhD, right? And then from your postdoc, you kind
of kind of went forward in that as well.

Edgar Berdahl

[8:01] Yes and what I'm trying to do is to do the programming in a way so that I never
have to do it again for the rest of my career. So the idea is I develop a sound synthesizer,
and then for the next 50-60 years, I can run it on whatever platform I want and adapt
it so that I can focus more on higher level abstract aesthetic concerns when I want
to rather than always being distracted by technical...

Mark DiTusa

[8:22] Well you make that sound like cheating, but really I think most computer scientists
would hope that, you know, whatever they're working on, they can take their previous
code and apply it there. But yeah, that's really cool and so you're LSU and I mean,
I personally attended the Science Café at Chelsea's. And I remember seeing that you
had this instrument where you had a slider. A mechanical slider, which is... It gives
you mechanical feedback is what the mechanical slider is, right? And you had it set
up so that it felt like you were plucking a string as you went through the center
of this mechanical slider just like the one you could see in KLSU studio right here,
in fact. I don't know if that's really a mechanical slider, but a slider all the same.
And so what inspired you to make something like this?

Edgar Berdahl

[9:04] We perceive the world using many different senses, such as our ears and our
eyes. We can use our body to feel objects in many different ways. There are many different
receptors. We can smell things using our nose. And in my opinion, we've already had
the revolutions for our eyes and our ears. In other words, we've had the audio revolution
in terms of technology. We've had or we are having, right now, the video revolution
in terms of technology. And I think that the next revolution that's going to come
is going to have to do with the sense of touch as these technologies become more and
more accessible. So my goal with this project was to be using these physical models
for exciting the eyes, exciting the ears, but also for exciting the sense of touch.

Mark DiTusa

[9:48] I guess from a performative standpoint, and kind of thinking this through,
it's very easy to be like... To give a visual and audio kind of component. Like when
you play this, or when you make a video and, you know... Let's say we're having a
show, you know, that's very easy to kind of convey to an audience. Tactile, as far
as I understand, is very much a composer... Or not composer... A performance sort
of experience. And so I guess that doesn't exactly translate to a show sort of format.
But do you see somehow incorporating music that has a tactile element which the crowd
can experience? Have you thought about that at all?

Edgar Berdahl

[10:23] Yes. Let me answer that question in two ways. One of them is that I think
we need to be designing technology that is suited to what artists need. And so I think
that providing a technology that enables artists to perform music more accurately,
or to play notes faster, for example, or to play music in a different and more exciting
way is a very important application because I don't think we should let industry tell
us what technology we should be using for making music. I think we as musicians should
be selecting this technology ourselves to meet our needs and our future needs. Secondly,
we can also provide tactile stimulation to audiences using a variety of technologies
that you probably have experienced at some time or other in the movie theater and
or through your mobile device, the vibrational technology that's in your mobile devices
that allows you to receive information without your eyes or ears, such as if your
phone is in silent mode, is completely in its infancy. These transducers, these motors
that vibrate your phone, are very simple and very cheap and very low fidelity. But
we will soon be seeing the arrival of new motors that have much higher fidelity so
that we can feel vibrations with a much more pristine quality. And so I could imagine
going to a movie theater and having your chair rumble or the armrests rumble as well
as having your phone vibrate because it's networked with the video system.

Mark DiTusa

[11:45] So you are an electrical engineer, but obviously you had a love for music.

Edgar Berdahl

[11:48] I'm an electrical engineer, and I'm a musician. I'm both.

Mark DiTusa

[11:51] Yeah. And you you keep both those identities, obviously. You didn't even say,
oh, well, I'm an electrical engineer, but I'm a musician on the side. You said, no,
I'm an electrical engineer and I incorporate my music in my work. And so my question
is, like... I guess how did you get started on music? Like, what instrument did you
learn or are you primarily just, "Oh, I love music" and then eventually picked up
an instrument later?

Edgar Berdahl

[12:11] I learned how to play piano relatively early and then migrated to the guitar,
and then from there to several other instruments. And since, since then, I've been
very interested in learning new instruments and learning how they work and making
music with them.

Mark DiTusa

[12:23] How skilled of a musician would you feel when you were getting your... I guess,
when you were in college and becoming an electrical engineer? Because like, obviously,
you had to kind of go, Oh, wow, you know, let's take this class on making sounds using
computing and then eventually you kind of synthesized these ideas together to become
an electrical engineer musician, you know?

Edgar Berdahl

[12:41] I think the important thing is to do both of them to the best of my abilities.
Absolutely. Because I think they inform each other in a way that's entirely unique.
And that's supported by the Center for Computation and Technology, here at LSU. In
a manner, these kinds of interdisciplinary works are supported very widely and strongly
throughout Europe, but in the United States are not supported as widely, but at LSU
we're very lucky to have this center here, which enables us to do these works and
invent the future.

Mark DiTusa

[13:11] For example, I'm a physics and chemistry double major, and I kind of did this
not because, well, physics and chemistry, I want to combine them. You know? I didn't
go into it thinking this. I just kind of went, oh well like physics, and I like chemistry.
And then eventually I went, oh, well. And it's easier for me because the disciplines
are closer to each other, but I kind of went, oh, well I really love these two majors.
and I want to do research that combines these two. And a lot of the grad schools I've
applied to... In fact, the personal statements I made were very much like, Look, I've
done projects and physics. I've done projects and chemistry. In fact, there's evidence
of me bringing experiences in both these places and kind of mixing them. And I really
want to do that in grad school, because I feel like there are people that are much
better at physics than me, but I don't feel like there's a lot of people who have
my sort of training in both fields. And so it kind of just happened, you know? It
kind of just synthesized on its own. I'm like, Oh, well, I'm good at these two things.
Sure. And for the science radio, I kind of went, Oh, well, I do radio, and I like
science. Oh, let's make a science radio thing. You know, it just kind of... It wasn't
something I was actively thinking about. And so I guess what I'm trying to probe at
is... I mean, what happened, you know? Did you just go, well, I'm an electrical engineer.
Oh ,and I like music. Oh, there's you know, there's audio engineers. There's all these
different things like, I know... What kind of clicked for you that you went, I can
make these two passions into one passion?

Edgar Berdahl

[14:25] Really, I wanted to discover the future, and I think the future lies in places
that we are still discovering, and many of those areas are going to be interdisciplinary
areas, as you've observed. And in fact, it's very easy to calculate that because if
you assume that there are in-disciplines that you can study, the interdisciplinary
areas will include at least n squared divided by two approximately. But if you incorporate
three different subjects into one particular study, then suddenly you have something
that has an n to the third power in it. And so you can see that there are many more
opportunities for discovery in these interdisciplinary, or even transdisciplinary
areas, than there are in the traditional disciplines. As you will probably well know,
if you imagine getting a PhD in particle physics, you could imagine spending seven
years preparing an experiment. A single experiment that you run in one day, and then
publish about on a paper with... I don't... Actually I'm not familiar enough, but
I guess maybe 40 other authors potentially.

Mark DiTusa

[15:27] Sure, yeah.

Edgar Berdahl

[15:29] It's much more challenging, at least in my opinion, to discover something
new if you're working within the confines of a field that has existed for a while.
But of course, remember back when people were making a lot of advances in physics,
it was very new, and probably a lot of the people who are engaging in that inquiry
consider themselves to be scientists, because the area of physics wasn't something
you could major in at that time, for example.

Mark DiTusa

[15:53] How did you like figure out that engineering plus music was for you? You know,
maybe it wasn't exact moment that you just kind of went. Did you even realize it was
happening? I'm just curious.

Edgar Berdahl

[16:04] It was the course that I took when I was an undergraduate.

Mark DiTusa

[16:05] It was really the course?

Edgar Berdahl

[16:07] It's an amazing course, and I'm very lucky to be teaching a similar course
here, which is Music 4745, which is a music course, but it's visited by about half
in part by students from other departments across the campus, through the Avatar Digital
Media minor.

Mark DiTusa

[16:22] Okay, that's really cool. So like you, you were like, this really inspired
me. And then he went ahead, and you made something hopefully just as inspiring for
other students. That's, that's amazing. And I really hope that, you know, something
like a talk like this could also tell people that, I mean, at the very least well
one, maybe you like music, and maybe you like science. And you know what? The two
may seem far apart, but you can find a way to combine the two in a very interesting
and revelatory way, you know? It can even be your job, as Dr. Berdahl has shown here.
And I hope that your class, in specific, has taught people that, you know, you really
can straddle the line between engineering and music. I guess as an anecdote, I remember
seeing at conference once somebody looked at DNA, and I think they assigned some sort
of like musical values to, you know, the four different sugars that make up DNA, and
they went, I'm gonna make a song out of this. And I don't think that's particularly,
you know, very deep, but I still think that's an interesting way to be like, I can
make art a science, you know?

Edgar Berdahl

[17:17] People call that field tonification, by the way.

Mark DiTusa

[17:20] Oh okay

Edgar Berdahl

[17:20] And there are a lot of commercial applications of it that are still emerging.
One of them being electric cars, which makes it a little noise, you might, for instance,
walk backwards right in front of them, and get run over if you don't hear that. So
we're thinking about ways to install speakers on cars, and how to design the sound
of these cars, which otherwise are very, very silent in order to promote safety and
an enjoyable audio atmosphere.

Mark DiTusa

[17:44] That's, that's awesome. So I guess a good question to ask is what kind of
instruments or what kind of work are you doing right now, just like research wise?

Edgar Berdahl

[17:52] A lot of my research right now is on exploring this taxonomy of new musical
instruments that are simulated through virtual physics emulations. That's a big part
and then providing access to people is another big part. So designing technology so
that you can not only hear these models and see them, but you can also feel them.

Mark DiTusa

[18:11] How would I feel one of the instruments that you would make, for example?

Edgar Berdahl

[18:14] You would feel it by exerting a force on it. And that's literally what happens
with these force feedback devices, which is they exert the force on you that you would
feel if you were actually touching these simulated objects. So you are... You're feeling
the force. The force be with you.

Mark DiTusa

[18:31] Yes. Very topical. What's an instrument that you're working on right now?
I mean, I don't know how long it takes you.

Edgar Berdahl

[18:37] I just finished the 62 metronomes was a week ago.

Mark DiTusa

[18:39] Oh Okay.

Edgar Berdahl

[18:40] Which is for a piece of music that is to be played out of 62 different loudspeakers
at the concert on January 25 here in the Digital Media Center at 7:30pm.

Mark DiTusa

[18:51] So are they all around you? So you hear tick, tick all the way around you?
Is that how that works?

Edgar Berdahl

[18:55] That's right. That's right. I think that 300 years from now, we're going to
have speakers everywhere be able to hear sounds coming from all sorts of different
angles and sides. And so we're discovering right now how to mix sound so that it sounds
good. And so many speakers.

Mark DiTusa

[19:10] I mean, I hope sounds sound good or pleasant. Or I mean, maybe... Well, that's
the thing, like, for example, in horror games, you know, and you have surround sound
that's... Well one, it's immersive. And then two, because it's immersive that's even
scarier. If you hear a sound... If you heard a sound, left, right, you know, or maybe
let's say it's mono like, okay, I heard a scary sound. That's one thing. If you heard
the scary sound is coming from specifically the back room to the right, you're gonna
start running from the front to the left, you know? That sort of thing. And so more
speakers are more, I guess, directed sounds can only bring someone even deeper into
the music or experience that you're having, right? Yeah and I totally agree with you
that... I want to go to this concert, and I want to hear what 62 Metronomes sound
like, not from the speakers I just heard them from but from all around. So let's say
that you're interested in a stem discipline, whatever it may be. Maybe it'd be engineering,
mathematics, or science in some way, shape, or form. But you really like music, or
you really like, I don't know, you like social science or something like this? What
kind of advice do you have for those people who want to find maybe something interdisciplinary?
How does somebody chase their dreams?

Edgar Berdahl

[20:15] Make it happen.

Mark DiTusa

[20:15] Make it happen.

Edgar Berdahl

[20:16] Forge a path. I mean, find your way?

Mark DiTusa

[20:18] Yes, find your way?

Edgar Berdahl

[20:19] Discover opportunities that inspire you and follow them through to your fullest
ability.

Mark DiTusa

[20:25] Yeah, I mean, it's... It may seem difficult and especially if it's a, you
know, an unforged path. You really have to do, you know, a lot of resource gathering
yourself. But if you're determined enough, if you are, you know, if you feel like
you're good enough for these two things that you really can find your way to doing
EMDM and the CCT at LSU and making your own instruments. Like 62 metronomes or, you
know, a string that turns into a cable and sounds like it's thrumming at a very specific
period. You can actually hear it like Edgar Berdahl.

Edgar Berdahl

[20:56] If people are interested in discovering their own new interdisciplinary possibilities,
I recommend coming down to Cultural Computing at the Center for computation and technology.
That's the group I work in. But we have... You can just walk along the hall where
we all have our offices and check out what everyone is doing. And you'll see that
there are many different new emerging possibilities that involve not only computer
science and music and electrical engineering, but also other disciplines such as digital
art, business, and journalism. There's a space for other emerging possibilities. Yes.

Mark DiTusa

[21:28] Yes. There you go. For those of you who are interested in music and technology...

Edgar Berdahl

[21:34] emdm.music.lsu.edu

Mark DiTusa

[21:37] Well Dr. Berdahl, it's been a pleasure to talk to you and and pick your brain
about emerging technologies in music.

Edgar Berdahl

[21:43] Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Becky Carmichael

[21:44] Experimental was recorded and produced in the KLSU Studios here on the campus
of Louisiana State University and is supported by LSU's communication across the curriculum
and the College of Science. Today's interview was conducted by Mark DiTusa and edited
by David Wilder. To learn more about today's episode, subscribe to the podcast, ask
questions, and recommend future investigators visit cxc.lsu.edu/experimental